A People's History of Heaven is a well-written book that spoke to me on many levels. Heaven is actually a slum hidden between expensive high-rise buildings in Bangalor, India. Five girls, almost women, who are different religions, sexual orientations, and have different goals in life form an unlikely group of crusaders as they try to save their homes from being bulldozed to make room for a shopping mall.

One girl is blind, one was born male, one an artist, one a dancer, the girls are so different but they love eachother and stand fast in their quest to save Heaven. They are joined by their mothers - all were cast off by their husbands because they couldn't produce a male heir. But they refused to be silent or to go down without a fight.

I knew very little about life in India - just what I've read or seen in movies. I was horrified to learn of the possible fate of these amazing, vibrant women, yet gratified to see them pull together and accomplish feats of strength and will power. Mathangi Subramanian paints a colorful, lively picture of life in a society that was new to me, but it is love at first sight. I don't feel like I'm explaining how powerful this book is , or how much it inspired me - you will have to read for yourself!

Thank you Algonquin Books for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I rate this book a 3 out of 5 Stars.

I appreciated the diversity in this book, and the in depth look into India’s culture. I loved the bond between the ladies in this book, and the strength they all had. The writing was very pretty. I love that when these women were faced with losing their homes, they banded together, and fought for their homes.

In full disclosure, I did struggle getting into this book, and becoming fully attached to the characters. But once I got about 60% into the book, it really started coming together for me, and since it’s on the smaller side, it was a very quick read. I do believe not many readers have this same issue though, so please take my words with a grain of salt.

I did find the right style to be very flowy, pretty, and delicate. This book was written with passion, and you can very obviously tell that the Author loved the story she was weaving.

This book is modern magic realism that I have been searching for! It will be the perfect beach read for realistic, fantasy readers this summer. It is told from a vantage point not often written from. I can’t wait to read what Subramanian writes next!

While this book isn't young adult, I do think it will appeal to YA readers.  We do read a lot about the adult's history, but I feel like the book really focused on the young girls.  



There are a lot of characters in this book.  I mean a lot.  At times, it was hard to remember who each one was, but there is a guide in the book.  I was reading the earc, so I wasn't able to just flip back and forth.  But I would have done that with a physical book and it would have made a big difference.



Each chapter goes back and forth in time, and focuses on different characters.  When the book starts, the women of Heaven were trying to stop bulldozers from tearing down their village.  The families there live in poverty, but this is their home.  Big companies have been building all around Heaven, and now they want to build there, too.  Most of the adult women in Heaven work.  Some for the rich families close to their village.  Some doing odd chores and work.  There are very few men.  Most leave their families and start new ones.  Some are alcoholics or abusers.  This takes place in a pretty modern time because there are cell phones, but it must follow the traditions of the area that I'm not familiar with.   The women listen to the men.  At least when they're around.  They are expected to produce a son.  Their daughters are married off at young ages.  They can't afford modern medicines and have their babies at home.



The young teens were such a big part of the story.  Deepa, Banu, Padma, Rukshana, and Joy.  Each one has their own strengths and their own difficulties.  They were all born the same year and are in the same class.  Except for Deepa.  She is mostly blind and was pulled out of class.  But Deepa "saw" more than people realized.  She was fierce and didn't let her disability harm her.   Deepa's mom was the first child born in Heaven.  Her mother suffered trying to have a child.  She had a lot of miscarriages early on.  Then a baby that died at birth.  She was taken to a hospital that was said to help.  They also paid the woman, which she didn't understand.  She just wanted a healthy baby.  She woke up after having a c-section with a healthy child, but they also sterilized her.



Banu lived with her grandma.  She's sick and everyone knows she won't be around much longer.  Banu isn't very good at school, but she's good with construction and art.  The headmistress of the school notices the strengths of each of her students.  She has connections and tries to find schools that the girls can go to later in life.  She tells Banu about a school for arts, something she didn't even know existed.



Padma was from a migrant family.  She is the only one who can read and write, so she takes care of everything for her family.  Even the finances.  Her mom has an untreated mental illness.  Padma is one of  the brightest in her class.



Rukshana is a queer tomboy.  She begs to wear the trousers instead of dresses.  Her mother is a hijabi union leader.



Joy is the top ranked school in her class.  She's also transgender with three older brothers.  Her mom decides to covert them to Christianity because they could be reborn and Joy could be a daughter.  



Each of these families is very different.  There are different religions and different languages.  But they are all loyal to each other.  Family isn't just blood.  It's who you let in and who you love with your whole heart.



There are a lot of warnings and I'm sorry if I forget some.  Abuse, abandonment, adultery, slurs and harassment towards Joy, non acceptance of gay men, poverty, mental illness, blindness, secret families, miscarriages, death of a baby, fertility issues.  This book shows all the bad along with the good (the people) who live these lives. 



Thank you to the publisher for suggesting this book and sending me a copy for review through Netgalley.  I gave this book 4 stars.  I think it's a pretty powerful book and it really makes you open your eyes to the things around you.

In India, a slum called Heaven is being threatened with razing.

The local women rally to fight it. We get to know some of these women, each distinctive, but the true focus is on five girls, each with different circumstances, including one with adult-level responsibilities, a visually impaired dancer, and a trans girl.


The writing is graceful, vivid, the narration swooping into each girl in intimate space, then outward again to paint the community. The grim side of poverty and its cost are not sentimentalized, but this is far from being a grimdark book. Central is love and hope, trust and delight in small things.

I found it an absorbing, beautiful read.

A People's History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian is a delight. Both hard hitting and enjoyable, it gives the full range of what it feels like to be a teen girl in a location some people will never see or be in. Both relatable and revelatory, it feels like a fresh take on a coming-of-age story. The friend group, Banu, Padma, Deepa, Joy, Rukshana, are five girls growing up in Heaven, a slum in India. Heaven, not nearly as ethereal as the name suggests, is facing problems from the government, and the girls must do their best to save it while still growing up themselves.

I really loved Subramanian's writing in this. She focused on all five girls really well, without the story feeling like it leaned too much on one girl's story. It was beautifully interwoven, lyrically written, and a joy to read. I'm so glad I got approved for this ARC. Thank you to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

an exceptional story drenched in culture and hope!

Mathangi Subramanian has intricately woven togethethe threads of these five girls lives into a beautiful story. Five extraordinary girls living in a slum called Heaven in Bangalore India. Now a slum is probably the furthest thing from heaven for most of us, but I think these girls might beg to differ. Surrounded with friendship and love these girls were an impenetrable support system for one another. There was so much beauty in how unconditionally these five friends excepted one another. I don’t know about you but I find that priceless! That was my biggest take away from this book the bond that all the women shared in this book was seriously enviable.

Heaven is being threatened with being bulldozed down, the women rally to fight and in doing so we learn the backstory of each of these incredible girls and the women in their lives. Each of these girls is trying to find their place in the world just like any girl anywhere, however they have quite a few more obstacles than others including religion, poverty, culture, and politics. Each girl has their own unique circumstances: an artist, a visually impaired girl Who loves to dance, a transgender girl, a girl struggling with her sexuality, and a girl that has been forced to grow up too fast with the burden of her family on her shoulders. Each girl’s story was unique and powerful, I really enjoyed every minute I spend with each of these young ladies. Their circumstances were so incredibly different from my own, but at the very heart there was so much that was similar. I love learning about other cultures it is another benefit of being a reader. But the more I read the more I realize that we are all more similar than different.We want to be loved, we want to find a place where we belong, and we all hold on to hope! Another thing I have learned is the more dire peoples situations are the more resilient they appear to be. This is a book that will stick with me for a long time, I definitely recommend!

*** many thanks to Algonquin for my copy of this book ***

Loved this book, loved all the girls and women in this story. I'm really into a first person plural POV. The story is non-linear but flows really naturally and the writing is gorgeous. Highly recommended.

Strong female characters set in India in a slum full of loving characters. This was written very strangely which made it a hard read for me.

I so enjoy when a story drags me to where they want me to be as these five fearsome girls sneak their way into your heart. Raised in a Bangalore slum, each character gets to provide their backstory that centers around lives defined around by femaleness and class structure as they fight for their future, adventures, and just to be. The unnamed first person plural narrative voice showcases the ingenuity and solidarity of the characters in the unconditional acceptance of each other and each just want to live their best life.

This lithe tale while explore our humanity is as profound as it is entertaining.

Female power shines brightly.

I struggled to get into this book a bit but once I did I found it to be a very moving story about the bonds of friendship between 5 teenage girls, each with very unique struggles and backgrounds. The crisis of the book is the slum where they live being torn down and their fight to save it but the heart of the story is each persons story and the way that society has played a role in that. The story definitely sheds light on the struggles of woman, and particularly poor women, in Indian society but it also shows us the heart and love of these people despite the struggles they face. Overall I enjoyed the book and look forward to seeing what this author does next.

A People’s History of Heaven centers around five young girls who share stories of love, loss, learning, laughter, and more importantly, sisterhood. We follow them, past and present, as they fight to remain in school, discover themselves, and fight to be girls in a world made for boys. It’s told through a very interesting POV, first person omniscient, where the narrator is never revealed but knows all the details of the girls’ and the older women’s lives. It’s something I don’t think I’ve ever read before, but it really works for this one because you get to feel the intense sense of community that’s here but you aren’t limited to one girl’s story, you get to see the history and present of Heaven.

I will say this feels very spastic in terms of plot because there doesn’t seem to be some central driving force aside from the pending demolition, and even that has little to no resolution in the end. You really hop around from girl to girl, woman to woman, story to story, but somehow, it works. And it works damn well. I really enjoyed this, it was both a fun read and a deeper, more meaningful one at the same time. It was one of those stories where I could just read a hundred pages without getting tired of the characters or the story line or anything, I was hooked from the moment I started.

The girls in this are so special and I think they’re what makes this story the gem that it is. There is so much diversity here within this community and each girl, each woman, gets the chance to tell their story and live their truth over the course of this novel. I loved them all. I was rooting for them all. I wanted them to go to school and fall in love (with boys or girls) and get out of the slums and live their dreams. This was the first time in a long time that I really connected to a cast of characters like I did with these girls, with their families. I laughed, I cried, I dreamed with them, and in the end, I was sad to see them go.

This novel was an incredibly moving and deeply touching debut and I’m both grateful to the author for bring these characters to me and for the publisher for offering this ARC to me. I can’t wait to see what else this author does, I’ll be following her for sure! Do yourself a favor and pick this one up!

This story of five young women living in a slum in Bangalore defies description. In lesser hands, the setting and the circumstances could have overwhelmed what is really a very heartfelt story of women supporting one another. I found this beautifully written and quite moving. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Recommend to those interested in expanding their horizons.

Thank you, Algonquin via NetGalley for the digital copy to review. All opinions are my own.

From the publisher’s synopsis: A politically driven graffiti artist. A transgender Christian convert. A blind girl who loves to dance. A queer daughter of a hijabi union leader. These are some of the young women who live in a Bangalore slum known as Heaven, young women whom readers will come to love in the moving, atmospheric, and deeply inspiring debut, A People’s History of Heaven.

“Back then, Heaven was just a bunch of blue tarps strung up into haphazard tents in a clearing on the edge of the coconut grove. A for-now kind of place, not a forever kind of place. A square of dirt to tide a family over until something better came along.”
Heaven is a slum in Bangladore, India. As one of India’s fastest growing cities, modern high-rises and technology are moving in, slowly encroaching on the little space the slum’s occupants still have. A community of women, from the elderly grandmas to a group of school-aged girls, this is a story of womanhood, supporting your friends, and fighting for your home.

“It’s funny, being a girl. That things that’s supposed to push you down, defeat you, shove you back, back, and farther back still? Turn it the right way, and it’ll push you forward instead.”
The thing I loved most about this book was the relationships all of the women, young and old, had with each other. Regardless of blood relations, the women looked after the children, using their individual strengths to encourage success in each of the young children running around the slum. They knew they were poor, but they didn’t dwell on it. They didn’t pity themselves. Instead, they rose above their circumstances and shined. With the help of the principal at the local school, these girls knew they were destined for more than the life they currently led. The principal saw the brilliance of their minds and prepped them for college as a way to help them better their futures. In a place where education wasn’t freely accepted for girls, she taught them that they did, in fact, deserve to rise!

This book is beautiful in all ways – the message, the character development, the story. I am so glad I stumbled upon this one!

What’s the last book that pleasantly surprised you?

There is a lot packed into this book. It follows five girls and it covers a range of topics from gender, class, women's education, friendship, religion, sexual fluidity, population control and more. Since it touches on all of these topics it doesn't cover most of them extensively. Friendship and education are a fairly large focus as the girls want to one day leave this slum. Also, despite being so young, it shows how much responsibility and trauma exist in their lives. This book is great for showing the perseverance of women and also a look at how certain ways of life disappear under the drive of urban expansion.

Thank you to Netgalley and Algonquin Books for sending me an ARC of this book, however all thoughts and opinions are my own.

What a beautiful book!. “Heaven” is a story of friendship, love, and the many, many ways in which girl-women make the choices that will form their lives and the lives of those they love. “Heaven” is a slum in Bangalore where the continual threat of destruction has always threatened the lives of these girls and their mothers and aunties.

Mathangi Subramanian is a writer to watch. This young woman has an elegant voice; and it will be so exciting to listen to it develop.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

In the 2010s, another movement to clear (read: demolish) slums in and around Bangalore, India. Mathangi Subramanian’s A People’s History of Heaven, a surprisingly funny book, tells the story of the demolition of a fictional slum that is based on the hundreds of slums that actually exist. As a group of children and their mothers protest against the bulldozers that have arrived a full month before the day the people were supposed to leave, we learn the histories of our protagonists in a series of short, interlinked episodes. This book had the potential to be very sad—and there are parts that are quite depressing—but I laughed more often than I teared up. I ended up loving all of the characters I was introduced to.

The teenaged girls at the center of the stories in A People’s History of Heaven met each other in a government school in Heaven, the slum where they live. (The name comes from a broken sign. All the letters broke off except for the ones that spell the word heaven in Kannada.) Deepa, the first girl we get to know, is a blind girl with a gift for dancing. Joy was born in a boy’s body, but she is so clearly a girl that she is allowed to use a girl’s name, wear girl’s clothes, and essentially live as a girl. Rukshana is the most combative, at least until she finds a girl who brings out protective and romantic feelings in her. Then there is Banu, who is not good at school. Banu has a talent for building things out of every piece of scrap she can find. Padma is the poorest of all of them, but she is the best student. Of all of the girls, perhaps Padma has the best chance at getting out of the slums.

All of the parents in the slum has a story about how they ended up there. For some, they were tricked out of their farms in the countryside and had to come to the city for work. Others came with their husbands who already lived in the city, albeit in Heaven. The girls have never known another life. There is no sense that they long for a richer life. They do, however, long to be free of the restrictions placed on girls’ behavior. They want to play like the boys. Banu wants to be an artist instead of scrounging for herself and her grandmother. Joy and Rukshana just want to be themselves. Joy wants to be married to a man and live as a woman. Rukshana emphatically does not want to marry a man.

Although there are characters on the fringes who do their best to help the slum dwellers, but this book isn’t about getting out of the slums. Instead, it’s about humanizing the masses of people who are there. Seeing the people of Heaven as actual, striving people means that they would need to be treated with a modicum of respect, that their homes could not just be destroyed to make room for airports and malls. It’s clear that people outside of the slums either see the residents of Heaven as either surplus population or as people who need to be rescued from their desperate plight.

I wished I could have stayed with the characters in A People’s History of Heaven longer. Each of the girls’ stories and the stories of their varied mothers connect to the stories of other characters; I wanted those stories, too. I loved that this book focused on the women, the ones who actually get things done around Heaven. (This book has a pretty cutting message about the failures of the men who are supposed to be the breadwinners.) Because I read about characters who were shifting for themselves, I didn’t pity these women. I deplored their circumstances, but I never saw them as helpless. I knew by the end of the book that, if the girls had a little bit of the right kind of help, they would be able to live the kind of lives they hoped for.

Heaven is a place in a fictional Bangalore, India. Heaven is slum where the people who are mostly women live in fear because of how globalization and western technology has claimed to come and improve their lives but has made the people poorer but have given them an incentive to come together fight for their homeland.

The writing style for this is very unusual and was very hard for me to get into, but still, I persisted. All the lives of the characters are interwoven and make each of the characters important to the story.

A People's History of Heaven is a story that is meant to shed light on the hardship of Indian women and how most times than not a woman is only ever second to a man, how life in the slum is bad and yet the government only care about lining their pockets inside of building the communities within that environment. Which is very good, but I just think the manner of was executed was lacklustre and very confusing, as I would have liked to understand and better read the story.

I really was hoping to love this book, but it just wasn't as sweet as it's blurb had implied. I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Diverse characters deal with life in ways that feel very real. This will appeal to teens who want to put their own lives into context and understand more about what other teens' experiences.

Mini review:

DNF

I received this E-ARC via Algonquin Books and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warning: Mention of bullying. Homes being torn down.

I was really looking forward to reading this! I saw that synopsis and knew I had to request it. Unfortunately it wasn’t for me.

I really didn’t like the writing style. I’m sure it gets better. But I could barely read a paragraph.

Still recommend.